Good Morning!
Today we’re listening to “Happy Yet” by The Bleeding Hearts
There isn’t much more that needs to be written about Bob Stinson.
By now, most people know the story; the founding guitarist in The Replacements (along with his younger brother Tommy) makes a lot of great music, makes a lot of bad choices, falls out of the band and off the radar before eventually succumbing to his demons and passing away far too young.
Most people know the beginning and end of that story. The Bleeding Hearts fills in the gap. The Replacements charged on with Slim Dunlap on guitar before eventually imploding on their own. Tommy Stinson went on to form Bash & Pop and play with Guns & Roses, of all bands. Chris Mars spends his days making art. Bob’s post-’Mats work (Static Taxi, Model Prisoners, etc.) went largely unknown to anyone outside the Twin Cities area.
Out of sight, out of mind.
After splitting with the band, Bob Stinson spent his days in a Minneapolis bar. It was there that he met Mike Leonard. Leonard eventually asked him to join The Bleeding Hearts, and Stinson even lived with him for a time. His time in The Replacements could be described as rocky, and this period with his new band was no different.
They recorded enough tracks for an album in ‘93, but Stinson again found himself kicked out of a band for what Leonard described as something “relatively stupid.”
With Stinson gone and his replacement just not working out, the band folded. Stinson would be dead just a few months later. And the record was shelved for almost three decades.
Flash forward to April 2022: Sunshine Dunham, who originally signed the band to her Fiasco Records label, and still owned the tapes, having held on to them all these years.
Reading about Record Store Day, it occurred to her that this might finally be a good time to release the album. Working with Bar/None records, that’s exactly what happened. With Riches to Rags now released, that final piece of Stinson’s story can be heard.
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Unsurprisingly, Riches to Rags sounds a lot like mid-eighties Replacements, with melodic songs, bar band energy, Leonard’s whiskey-toned rasp and Stinson’s distinctive hard pop flash guitar. Tunes like the one-two opening punch of the title track and “Gotta Find a Way,” the power pop-gone-crunch “Tonight” and “Poker Face,” the sneering youthful confusion of “Know It All” and the midtempo semi-acousticer “100 Ways” may not sound exactly like the ‘Mats, but they’re clearly heavily influenced by Minneapolis’ favorite sons. “I’m not happy yet,” Leonard sings on “Happy Yet,” “I’m as happy as I’m gonna get” – a familiar sentiment to Westerbergers.
Read the rest of the review here.
Listen:
“Happy Yet” by The Bleeding Hearts| Riches To Rags, 2022
Click the record to listen on your platform of choice.
As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this track!
Thanks for being here,
Kevin—
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Good read!
What a fascinating read. Thanks for this!